Said Ancient Otter: "Oh, if we could only be a little nearer to the lodges, I could tell. Little Wolf's lodge is on the west side of the camp circle, and right next it, the first one to the south, is a lodge painted with two wolves. The Crow wolf medicine."
"Yes, I remember that lodge. It is five lodges north of my sister's lodge," said Mad Plume.
"Well, one thing we can do! Unless we freeze to death!" Mad Plume went on. "We can stay right here until night, then sneak into camp and find my sister and your friend and get them to help us, to protect us until we are in the chief's lodge."
We all agreed that that was the only thing to do, and began our chilly wait. Red Crow pointed to the many bands of horses grazing between the camp and us, and on both slopes of the valley. "What a chance for us if we were raiders!" he exclaimed.
"Don't talk foolishness at this time!" Mad Plume told him. "It is best that you pray the gods for help in what we are about to undertake!" And with that he voiced a short, earnest prayer to the sun, to Old Man, and his own medicine animal—"thou little under water animal"—he called it, to preserve us from all the dangers that we were to face there in the enemy camp. And when he had finished I cried out even as the others did: "Ai! Spuhts-uh Mut-tup-i, kim-o-ket-an-nan!" (Yes! Above People, pity have for us!)
Hai! Hai! But it was cold! Our horses stood humped up and miserable, the sweat freezing on their hair.
"We have to hobble them and turn them loose to graze, else they will freeze to death," said Mad Plume.
"Yes, we may as well do that. If all goes well with us we shall find them safe enough hereabout, and if we never come back for them, why, they will live anyhow!" said Ancient Otter. So we turned them out, and set our saddles and ropes and pishimores in a little pile, and stamped about and swung our arms trying to keep warm.
Oh, how slowly, and yet how fast the sun went down that evening. But down it went at last, and as soon as the valley was really dark we started for the camp. As we neared it Mad Plume's last words were: "Remember this: You are to expect abuse and you are to stand it until you see that there is no hope for us. Then, die fighting!"